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You are here: Home / 2008 / Archives for June 2008

Archives for June 2008

Strangers at the door – do you let them in?

June 6, 2008 by Tricia

A few minutes ago a man knocked on our door. We have a number of solicitors around here so I often ignore knocks at the door, but this man knocked so hard that the dog started barking and I decided to go to the door to find out who it was.

Well it was this man working for a company that I think was called Living Green. I stood in the enclosed front porch to talk with him as Midnight mostly watched from the screen door inside the house.

He asked me how old our water heater was. Honestly I don’t know. It’s a rented heater and it was here when we moved into the house. At the very least it’s more than 7 years old. Apparently our government is giving a rebate on water heaters that are older than 5 years. We can apparently have it replaced free of charge.

My first thought was ok well we’re renting our hot water tank in the first place so I could probably just call the company and have them replace it free of charge anyway …

He made it sound like if I didn’t let him in so that he could check the serial number and age of our hot water heater we’d lose out on the rebate.

I know our government is giving all kinds of rebates to those who upgrade their furnaces to more energy efficient models as well as those who work on their home to reduce energy usage such as improving insulation, replacing windows and yes replacing water heaters. So I wasn’t buying his pitch.

I’d had a gas company rep at the door a few days ago trying to get me to buy into a lower rate gas program too. Our house is oil heated (the tank was just filled up a few days ago at a cost of almost $800) so I wasn’t interested in his gas company pitch either.

I figure if these people that come to the door with sales or rebate offers are legit I should be able to get a pamphlet from them so that I can read the details of the offer on my own and also talk with my husband about whatever being offered.

Chris and I rarely let anyone that comes to our door with a sales pitch in the house. Particularly if we are alone in the home. You just never know if they are legitimate or not.

I’m not paranoid or anything. I’m just being safe. Plus … once you let a salesperson into your home, how the heck do you get them out? Also once you let a sales person into your home it’s a lot harder to turn down the offer – not impossible, but harder.

When I came back in the house I noticed that the TV was now set to closed captioning. Midnight must have hit the remote and turned it on somehow. I have no idea, but it took me a few minutes to try and figure out how to turn the closed captioning off again! I think she chewed on the remote as she would have had to press a few buttons to turn it on!

Puppies. You can turn your back on them for a second!





Filed Under: Appliances and Accessories, Home and Lifestyle, Living Green, Money, The Neighborhood, Toronto Tagged With: company rep, energy, energy rebate, energy usage, front porch, furnaces, government, home invasions, hot water heater, hot water tank, hot water tank replacement, insulation, Living Green, Midnight, models, offer, pamphlet, puppies, rebates, replacing windows, representative, sales people, sales pitch, salesman, salesperson, serial number, solicitors, stranger at the door, strangers, water heaters

aLinks WordPress plugin creates automatic links within posts

June 6, 2008 by Tricia

A few days ago I downloaded a WordPress plugin called aLinks. This plugin has been around for a while, but I’d never thought to try it until now, even though Lucia from Big Bucks Blogger was singing it’s praises last September. I should have tried it earlier! This plugin has a ton of potential.

Bloggers link to lots of sites in their posts. They link to their blogging friends, they link to past posts, they link to great websites they’ve just discovered and some even add affiliate links to their posts. It’s just something we do. I’ll even go so far as to bet that most of the bloggers reading this post likely link to at least one site in just about every post they write.

Why not make linking easier?

The aLinks plugin has been designed so that you can set up a link within the plugins admin area and then never have to hyperlink to that phrase every again!

I haven’t set up the plugin on this blog yet as I wanted to try it on one of my smaller less trafficked blogs first while I test to see if it causes any CPU over use problems on my server. (remember last year I went through two web hosting companies because my sites were using too much of the shared servers memory!)

If you’d like to see what one of the links looks like once it’s set up check out this post on My World. I used the built in Amazon module to quickly create a link to an Amazon page that sells dog beds. Now whenever I write the words dog bed in a post on My World it will automatically link to that Amazon page for me. Not only that, but I set up the aLinks plugin so that it will find any of my past posts that have any of the keyword phrases that I created and it will add the links to them too.

I have a number of blogs and I make references to them occasionally so I spent a few minutes setting up automatic links for my various blogs. Now all I have to do is type in the name of one of my blogs and when I publish my post the link to whichever blog I mentioned will appear. Just that alone will save me some time.

Considering that I have so many blogs I also appreciate the export/ import feature. Once you create your list of keyword phrase links you can import them to another blog using the plugin. That’s going to come in handy once I’m done setting up the first blog I’m trying aLinks on!

This plugin has too many great features for me to describe in one post.

I’ll just finish by telling you that you can add modules to the plugin for a few affiliate programs such as eBay, Clickbank, Commission Junction, iTunes and several others, as well as one for Wikepedia. This means that along with the built in Amazon module you’ll be able to monetize your blog by scattering a few links to products you’re happy recommending. Link the word “book” to Amazons bestseller page and anytime you use the word book in a post you’ll automatically have a link that could earn you money.

The aLinks plugin has been updated recently to work with WordPress 2.5.1 so if you’re a WordPress Blogger consider giving this plugin a try.

Update – I don’t use this plugin anymore because it stopped working and there doesn’t seem to be anymore updates. In fact creators page no longer seems to exist. Sorry!

Filed Under: Affiliates, Blogging, Cool stuff, Internet, Linky Love, Make Money, Wordpress, Wordpress Plugins Tagged With: add affiliate links, affiliate, aLinks, amazon, automatically add links to posts, bestseller, blog, blogger, bloggers, Blogging, Clickbank, commision junction, computer, deep links, dog beds, easy links, Ebay, export import, few minutes, free, frequently used links, hyperlink, import feature, iTunes, keyword, keyword phrases, Make Money, module, monetize blog, monetize posts, phrase, post, posts, Technology, web, web hosting companies, Wikipedia, Wordpress, Wordpress Plugin

We need to get new health insurance

June 6, 2008 by Tricia

I’m starting to think that I’m never going to get back to work at the hospital. I’ve been off work on medical leave now for two and a half years! Two and a half years – mostly without pay too, as I only had sick leave pay for the first 15 weeks. Argh.

Topping that off, I’ve been off long enough now that my health insurance is about to end. They apparently only cover employees on medical leave for 30 months. So once I got the letter from work, about two weeks ago, Chris went and applied for group health insurance with his hospital union plan. We still don’t know if we’ve been approved or not. I hope my illness doesn’t cause any problems with getting coverage.

In other news, when Chris came home from work the other day he said that they were busy putting cell phone amplifiers in several areas of the hospital. It was only a year or so ago that they actually allowed people to use cellphones in the hospital. I remember working in the ER and constantly telling people to turn off their cell phones. Now everyone’s walking around with one!

Wish us luck on getting new health insurance!

Filed Under: Health Fitness and Beauty, Nursing, Ontario Health Care, Toronto Tagged With: cell phone, cell phones, coverage, group health insurance, Health Fitness and Beauty, home, Hospital, illness, medical leave, phone amplifiers, two and a half years, union, work

Such tiny creatures

June 4, 2008 by Tricia

Wordless Wednesday

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Aw aren’t these tiny pups cute? I bet that the caps and sweaters they’re wearing are smaller than the ones that are made for newborn babies!

One of our neighbors has a little Chihuahua and even when Midnight was only three months old she looked like a giant beside Sweat Pea.

Filed Under: Pets and animals, Wordless Wednesday Tagged With: animal photo, caps, chihuahua, cute, giant, Midnight, neighbors, newborn babies, photo, sweat pea, sweaters, three months, tiny creatures, tiny dogs, Wordless Wednesday

It’s amazing how the right lighting can change the look of a room

June 4, 2008 by Tricia

The weather here in Toronto was cool for the month of May, but now that June is here it’s starting to heat up. By Friday it will be 31 Celsius (87.8 F) and we haven’t even put the air conditioners in the windows yet.

Since we’re unlikely to have air conditioning by Friday I’m glad that we have several ceiling fans throughout the house. They stir the air and even if the house is too warm that breeze created by the ceiling fans is helpful.

Actually, we use our ceiling fans year round. We reverse their motion in the winter so that warm air can circulate through the house better, and in the summer we reverse them again so that they can fan the cooler air. We can keep the thermostat a degree or two lower in the winter and save money on our heating bill thanks to the fans, and I’m sure they help when we use air conditioning as well.

All of our ceiling fans are equipped with lights so they provide some of the lighting within our home as well. Luckily all but one ceiling fan can use the low wattage florescent bulbs so we save money on our lighting bill too.

Earlier this evening I was reading a home lighting article on the HGTV website and, as usual, whenever I read home decor articles or watch decorating type TV shows I start thinking of what I can do in my own home. Remember we’re renovating, but when our work is done it will be lovely and I’ll need all kinds of new decor – especially lighting.

I visited the the Littman Bros website and had a look at their lighting products. They have quite a large selection of home lighting. They have just about every kind of lighting product you can think of – ceiling fans, under cabinet lighting, ceiling, wall, bath, lamps and even outdoor lighting.

While I was browsing the site I ended up looking at their forecast lighting. They have some lovely forecast chandeliers – ones that might look beautiful in our dining room when we’re done renovating. Sometimes changing the whole look and feel of a room is as simple as changing the lighting and I’m sure one of those chandeliers would make a huge difference in the look of our dining room area. They’re gorgeous.

If you’ve been thinking of purchasing new lighting for your home, or perhaps buying a ceiling fan to help cool your home on warm summer days (and save on your air conditioning bill) take a moment to visit Littman Bros, I’m sure you’ll be pleased with their selection. Oh, and they’re having a sale on landscape lighting right now too – 40% off. That’s a good deal!

Filed Under: Appliances and Accessories, Decor, Home and Garden, Home and Lifestyle, Home Decor, Shopping Tagged With: air conditioner, air conditioning, articles, bath, beautiful, bulb, bulbs, buy, buying, cabinet lighting, ceiling, ceiling fan, ceiling fans, chandeliers, cool, deal, Decor, decorating, dining room, forecast lighting, home, Home Decor, home lighting, house, lamps, landscape lighting, light, lighting bill, lighting product, lighting products, lights, littman bros, new decor, outdoor lighting, Products, reno, renovating, save money, selection, show, special, Summer, thermostat, Toronto, tv show, wattage, weather, weather toronto, winter

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